Good! Igbo/Yoruba keyboard now available for Windows and Mac users

Created by Yoruba Name, the keyboard was developed by Kọlá Túbọsún, whose bachelor of arts’ thesis formed the backbone of the project. He and his team of linguists and techies got together to solve this old issue and it is a triumph indeed!

Although it originally focused on Yorùbá, the keyboard eventually expanded toIgbo, another major Nigerian language. Laila, one of the volunteers on the Yoruba Name team as well as the keyboard development explained:

When we started sharing the keyboard layout on social media and encouraging our community to use it, we received a number of requests from Igbo speakers to make a similar product for their language. It turns out that Igbo orthography is very similar to Yorùbá, in the sense that it also includes grave and acute accents as tone marks, as well as subdots. Since Igbo requires only a couple of extra characters (ị, ụ and ñ), it made sense to add them in the updated June 2016 release.

This new Yoruba keyboard is music to my ears even if I can’t use it. The fact that the Igbo language has also been added is doubly exciting!